Practical Reasoning Agent

About the Project

These projects are open to students worldwide, but have no funding attached. Therefore, the successful applicant will be expected to fund tuition fees at the relevant level (home or international) and any applicable additional research costs. Please consider this before applying.

Agent interpreters based on the Beliefs, Desires, and Intentions (BDI) model traditionally perform means-ends reasoning using plan libraries composed of reactive planning rules. However, the design of such rules often imposes a heavy knowledge engineering burden on a designer, and trades off flexibility for runtime efficiency. This use of planning rules originates from the limitations of planning technology at the time of the first BDI implementations. While these limitations have gradually been overcome by the integration of various types of planning into existing BDI theories, the corresponding interpreters remain fundamentally plan-library based [1]. This project aims to investigate novel agent reasoning techniques that rely on more powerful planning technologies, ranging from generalised planning [2], to natural language-based reasoners [3], and Reinforcement Learning [4].

Candidates can potentially work remotely on the PhD.

Informal enquiries can be made by contacting Prof Meneguzzi (felipe.meneguzzi@abdn.ac.uk)

Decisions will be based on academic merit. The successful applicant should have, or expect to obtain, a UK Honours Degree at 2.1 (or equivalent) in Computing Science.

We expect the candidate to have experience with at least one of the following topics:

• Automated Planning algorithms (e.g., heuristic search) and formalisms (e.g., PDDL)
• Multiagent Systems
• Multiagent Planning
• Goal and Plan Recognition
• Natural Language Inference

We encourage applications from all backgrounds and communities, and are committed to having a diverse, inclusive team.

Application Procedure:

Formal applications can be completed online: https://www.abdn.ac.uk/pgap/login.php.

You should apply for Degree of Doctor of Philosophy in Computing Science to ensure your application is passed to the correct team for processing.

Please clearly note the name of the lead supervisor and project titleon the application form. If you do not include these details, it may not be considered for the project.

Your application must include: A personal statement, an up-to-date copy of your academic CV, and clear copies of your educational certificates and transcripts.

Please note: you do not need to provide a research proposal with this application.

If you require any additional assistance in submitting your application or have any queries about the application process, please don't hesitate to contact us at researchadmissions@abdn.ac.uk

Funding Notes

This is a self-funding project open to students worldwide. Our typical start dates for this programme are February or October.

Fees for this programme can be found here Finance and Funding | Study Here | The University of Aberdeen